Bruce Babbitt's New Toilet Bowl

You need more proof of Ralph Nader's contention that the national political parties have melded into a single beast? Then look no further than the beltway law firm of Latham and Watkins. On June 22, we learned that one of Latham and Watkins' top young lawyers, Phillip Perry, will be leaving the firm to join the Bush Justice Department, where he will oversee the important task of determining which power plants will be held to strict new air pollution standards and which ones will be given exemptions in the name of the so-called energy crunch.

Perry was last seen impersonating former CNN anchor, Bernard Shaw, during preparations for the vice-presidential debates between Dick Cheney and Joseph Lieberman. Perry is white. He is also the son-in-law of Dick Cheney. During his time at Latham and Watkins, Perry was known as a fierce litigator. According to his attorney profile, still online at the firm's webpage, Perry specialized in representing "power generation facilities."

Perry won't be going alone. His pal and fellow Latham and Watkins partner, Jeffrey Holmstead, has been nominated to serve as the Environmental Protection Agency's assistant administrator for Air Pollution and Radiation. In that capacity, Holmstead will find himself in the Solomonic position of having to now regulate the very companies he and his law firm were representing in lawsuits against the EPA, including Cinergy, American Electric Power, and Alliance for Constructive Air Policy, an industry front group that seeks to "overhaul" the Clean Air Act.

The hallways of the executive branch are not virgin ground to Holmstead. He served under C. Boyden Gray, now an advisor on air pollution issues to the Environmental Resources Trust, a group created by the Environmental Defense Fund, in the White House Counsel's office during Bush I.

Before you begin to feel that perhaps Latham and Watkins, which has 1,300 lawyers and billed more than $600 million last year, has lost some of its punch inside the beltway, perhaps you should take notice of its newest recruit: former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

Is this a sign that Latham and Watkins is turning from a mega-firm for Fortune 500 corporations into a defender of the planet? Of course not. Babbitt made clear within days of his hiring as a chief counsel in the firm's Environmental Litigation shop that he is quite comfortable with Latham and Watkins' work on behalf of corporations on issues ranging from Agent Orange to trichloroethylene.

Within days of landing his new job, Babbitt could be found at an annual gathering of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the $3 billion lobbying arm of the nuclear industry, cheerleading for the planned Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump, on Western Shoshone lands in Nevada, about a hundred miles as the condor flies from Las Vegas. The Clinton administration opposed the dump, acting more out of a desire to keep Nevada Sen. Harry Reid happy than any sudden seizure of ecological conscience. Nonetheless, Clinton vetoes kept the nuclear industry from winning this long sought prize to unload its radioactive waste (and a multibillion dollar liability) onto the federal government and one of the nation's most destitute Indian tribes.

"Studies have gone on at Yucca Mountain," Babbitt said. "There's not much left to quarrel about out there. It's a safe, solid geologic repository."

Babbitt ignored Clinton-era reports by the US Geological Survey, a wing of the Department of the Interior, suggesting that the Yucca Mountain repository would sit over a major earthquake fault and that it may pose a risk to one of Nevada's largest aquifers.

Instead Babbitt tried to suggest that the nuclear industry was being held hostage by a couple of Nevada politicians. "The geologic disposal of nuclear waste is a political problem, period," Babbitt said. "I believe Yucca Mountain is an appropriate and safe site." The former head of the Democratic Leadership Council told the nuclear lobby that Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and former senator Richard Bryan had monkeywrenched the system to keep the dump from opening. Reid and Bryan are both Democrats. Babbitt's comments evoked a standing ovation from the crowd, something even Dick Cheney had failed to do when he spoke to the NEI earlier that morning.

Harry Reid didn't much like Babbitt's posturing and finger pointing before the nuclear industry. "With all due respect, Babbitt means nothing," Reid told the Las Vegas Review Journal. "What would we care about James Watt's feelings on Yucca Mountain? I have the same feelings about Bruce Babbitt."

Babbitt said that his view on Yucca Mountain should be taken as that of a dispassionate expert. "I'm only saying what I believe based upon 30 years experience with these issues," Babbitt said. "I've got a degree in physics, I was on the Three Mile Island Commission, governor of Arizona for nine years, secretary of the Interior for eight years. I watched over the construction of the Palos Verdes nuclear plant outside Phoenix. Nuclear energy can be done safely."

Babbitt holds a masters degree in geophysics from the University of Newcastle in England. But that didn't impress Rep. Shelley Berkley, the Democrat from Las Vegas. "Babbitt is sticking his nose somewhere it doesn't belong," Berkley said. "This guy was on the Three Mile Island Commission and it's his feeling that nuclear power is safe?" Babbitt was tapped by Jimmy Carter to serve on the Kemmer Commission, which investigated the near-meltdown at Three Mile Island. But Babbitt has long been a proponent of nuclear energy as a "green fuel" and has argued that increased federal subsidies should be directed toward the nuclear industry in the name of countering global warming. While governor of Arizona, Babbitt did next to nothing to aid the thousands of Navajo suffering from cancers linked to uranium mines and radioactive tailings piles that litter northern Arizona.

The only other four-star Democrat who has publicly supported the Yucca Mountain dump is J. Bennett Johnston, the former Louisiana senator who was the patron saint of the oil and nuclear industry during his days in Washington. Johnston now runs his own DC lobbyshop and represents a noisome roll of clients, largely from the arms industry and energy sectors, including Entergy, Comega, Lockheed, Avondale Shipyards, Edison International, and the group that hosted Babbitt, the Nuclear Energy Institute. (Johnston, by the way, recently submitted a 30-page brief to the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee demanding that his fellow Dems give the oil industry its Big Three: open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, begin leasing in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida panhandle, and give the oil industry "royalty relief.")

Latham and Watkins represents US Ecology, the nation's biggest radioactive waste hauler and a prime candidate to get millions in contracts if Yucca Mountain is given the green light. Before leaving the Department of Interior, Babbitt had promised that he would not cash in on his years of government service by becoming a high-priced DC lawyer. But after taking the job with Latham and Watkins, Babbitt defended his about-face by saying that he needed to make money to pay off his legal bills stemming from an independent counsel investigation into whether or not he committed perjury when he said he did not try to shake down Indian tribes for campaign contributions. (Latham and Watkins partners bill at $500 per hour.)